Gen 1Fire Blast

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Ever since I started playing RBY, I have been amused by Fire Blast and its 30% burn chance. Effectively, it is sort of the Scald of RBY, except it has higher power and arguably a better distribution as most Pokemon can learn it. For the record, this is more about non-fire types using Fire Blast, because obviously they are going to run it.

The problem with Fire Blast is that in OU, it really doesn't offer much for the Pokemon that learn it. For one thing, you have to keep in mind that the only Pokemon that are hit super effectively by the move in RBY OU are Exeggutor and Jynx. Of those, Exeggutor is already hit hard by Blizzard (incidently, every Pokemon that can learn Fire Blast can also learn Blizzard, bar Golem), and Jynx is as weak as a wet piece of convenience store quality toilet paper on the physical side. There is also the concern of some Pokemon actually preferring to be burned, which you mentioned. In fact, pretty much every Pokemon that doesn't rely on physical moves would love to be burned. Losing just 1/16 of your health every turn is a lot better than having your speed cut to 25% and being immobilized 25% of the time via paralysis, being effectively useless for the rest of the match via freeze, or being immobile for several turns via sleep.

As far as individual users go, none of them really have much room for Fire Blast. Chansey already gets great coverage between Ice Beam and Thunderbolt. Ice Beam is necessary for not only coverage but freeze wars as well, and Chansey becomes much easier to switch into with Pokemon like Slowbro and Cloyster if it gives up Thunderbolt. Dragonite's main niche is as a AgiliWrap user, and Fire Blast doesn't help it in that role, leaving Surf and Blizzard as the better choices. Golem already hits Jynx extremely hard with Rock Slide (or Earthquake, for that matter), and it's not doing much to Exeggutor anyway with its low base 55 Special stat. Rhydon already has Blizzard to hit Exeggutor with (even then Rock Slide hits harder than Blizzard or Fire Blast), and it KOs Jynx even easier than Golem with its STABs. Slowbro doesn't really have much room for it, and even if it wanted to run a coverage move for Exeggutor, Ice Beam and Blizzard can do that better than Fire Blast can. Snorlax is all about Normal attack spam, and it needs Earthquake and Surf to get past the Pokemon that can stop that (Gengar, Rhydon, and Golem). Tauros already commonly uses Blizzard as a means to get past Golem and Rhydon, and it needs Earthquake for Gengar, so it doesn't have room for it either.

Now, in lower tiers, Fire Blast becomes a much better option since Fire-types become much more prominent as you drop from one tier to another. However, OU really doesn't have many Pokemon that can abuse it, and generally you'd much rather focus on spreading sleep, freezes, and paralysis than burns.

Your reply LARGELY focuses on how limited Fire Blast is as a coverage move, which we can all easily agree on. And while Fire Blast may not deal as much damage to something, it's the burn chance itself that is prompting this discussion, so I'm going to set aside how Fire Blast isn't very effective as a coverage move and talk about being burned.

When a Golem or Rhydon get burned, they become worthless. For fun, I've run Charizard in OU before, and when I burn Rhydon/Golem on the switch, I can stay in and take them out, only taking about 50%, or I can switch out, confident they're neutered for the rest of the match.

Likewise, I've been burned as a Tauros, which is equally awful. In PO, critical hits don't bypass the burn attack drop (I've reported the glitch), so even though you'd think Tauros could crit past the burn 20% of the time at least, in PO that's not the case.

So yeah, Fire Blast is an awful "coverage" move if you're trying to do damage. But if you're just trying to cripple something to make it easier to handle later, your options are burn, paralysis, freeze. Freeze is more unlikely than a burn, even though it's better. But I'd say that a burned Tauros would be much friendlier to face off against than a paralyzed Tauros (ETA: in many cases; depends on what Pokemon you have left to face it later).

I don't know where I'd ever fit FB onto a moveset (Gibbs is right that moveslots are too valuable to give up for a gimmick), but if you burn the right opponent, it can be surprisingly awesome.

World's Strongest Fairy

Fire Blast is really only worthwhile on Fire-types, and honestly because it burns Rocks so often it makes them into half-decent mixed attackers despite the fact that most only get Fire and Normal moves. By "half-decent", of course, I mean "not really good, but still better than you'd expect".

Unless you get STAB on it, though, the lack of coverage and potentially bad status offered by Fire Blast relative to, say, Blizzard makes it a pretty bad move.

Ever since I started playing RBY, I have been amused by Fire Blast and its 30% burn chance. Effectively, it is sort of the Scald of RBY, except it has higher power and arguably a better distribution as most Pokemon can learn it.

But a worse typing. Fire Blast, in RBY, hits two OU mons SE that aren't hit SE by Blizzard - those being Articuno and Jynx. The former is rarely seen and hit SE by Thunderbolt anyway, while I would actually use Fire Blast on Starmie for the latter were it not for the fact that Starmie doesn't learn it.

30% burn chance, while decent, is not enough to justify a moveslot by itself; you also need to actually inflict some damage.

I was bored, so I broke down the OU Pokemon by their willingness to be burned:

To be honest, if Starmie learned it, I'd use it on my Starmie lead (and if Alakazam learned it, it'd be a no-brainer). But Starmie doesn't learn it. Chansey has 4MSS and does better with Reflect or Counter than a 30% burn chance, but if you're somehow 100% certain that you'll be facing Jynx then it might be an option since Jynx loves to play for the Chansey freeze. Rhydon/Golem don't care about hitting Ice-types since they have STAB Rock Slide off humongous Attack, and Body Slam (despite inflicting a possibly-inferior status) has the advantage of still doing serious damage and Not Burning Starmie (which is the second-most-common switch-in after Egg). Snorlax has 4MSS and Tauros/Snorlax want damage more than they want status anyway. Slowbro again wants to Not Burn Starmie, and needs all four of its moveslots to be reliable (Surf Slowbro needs Thunder Wave to get past Starmie, Psychic Slowbro needs one of Reflect, Withdraw, or Blizzard to assure victory against Rhydon).

Dragonite is a very interesting case inasmuch as Dragonite would actually prefer to face a burned Starmie - but Dragonite is potentially OHKOed by Starmie (and hates status even more than Starmie) and thus doesn't have time to waste.

So PO is actually programmed appropriately? I may have to go retract my bug report. But yeah, speaking from experience, having a burned Tauros when critical hits don't make up for the drop is awful; it makes Tauros pretty worthless ... way, way more worthless than if it was paralyzed. It can't get past Chansey, it can't get past Starmie, it can't even get past Alakazam. It's rubbish against Snorlax. Can't beat Gengar one-on-one anymore. The only matchups that wouldn't be impacted would be burned Tauros using Blizzard vs Golem/Rhydon ... even when facing Eggy and Dragonite Tauros often complements blizzard with body slam or hyper beam, meaning it would be in a rough spot against those guys too. If that's not a glitch, then I kind of DO wonder why some other 'mons might not run FB. Coverage/damage calculations be damned, if you managed to burn your opponent's Tauros, Snorlax, and Golem/Rhydon you would find yourself in a pretty nice spot.

Oh. Is it different for RBY than for other generations? I have the feeling that critical hits while burned still don't do that much damage, at least in Emerald (which I've played the most on cartridge).

Also, Golden Gyarados, I'm not sure if it's programmed properly in PO, but apparently I don't actually know how it's supposed to work..

High level use of fire blast would probably be based around baiting frozen pokemon (incredibly situational) and using the opponent's eggy as an offensive pivot to lure pokemon like starmie in to take physical hits and/or paralysis (less situational).

Different fire types want to see different switch ins. Flareon probably wants to see starmie switch into it's decently strong paraslams, whereas moltres would probably prefer rock switch-ins, for the decent damage and burn chance.

High level use of fire blast would probably be based around baiting frozen pokemon (incredibly situational) and using the opponent's eggy as an offensive pivot to lure pokemon like starmie in to take physical hits and/or paralysis (less situational).

Different fire types want to see different switch ins. Flareon probably wants to see starmie switch into it's decently strong paraslams, whereas moltres would probably prefer rock switch-ins, for the decent damage and burn chance.

Fire Blast is really only worthwhile on Fire-types, and honestly because it burns Rocks so often it makes them into half-decent mixed attackers despite the fact that most only get Fire and Normal moves. By "half-decent", of course, I mean "not really good, but still better than you'd expect".

Unless you get STAB on it, though, the lack of coverage and potentially bad status offered by Fire Blast relative to, say, Blizzard makes it a pretty bad move.

Still, there's the option if you play "ok" your cards you can swap Blizzard for Fire Blast on some Pokémon to hit SE on Articuno and Jynx and at the same time you want a try to stop the fun of things such as Tauros, but that is so situational that doesn't worth the space at all.

About the Fire-Types Pokémon on OU, we all know they are not that great, but Charizard, Moltres, Ninetales and Flareon can do some things on OU; you're gonna probably win less games, but they are not that bad, either, in fact, a STAB Fire Blast coming from something like Moltres can really hurt your opponent, specially because you can also burn and add extra damage to the cause or stop physical oriented Pokémon. If weren't for Starmie, Alakazam, Chansey and at some degree Slowbro, maybe you could see Fire Blast a lot more on play, but they are there; same reason why Fire Blast is not that seen on lower tiers, either, as Water and Psychic pals still dominate the game.

Thing is that the one thing that could really take a shot at using Fire Blast over Blizzard - Starmie - doesn't get it. Chansey needs Ice for the Rocks because it has no STAB, Tauros is literally only using Blizzard to hit Rocks, and the same goes for Snorlax and Dragonite if they even bother with it. Rhydon/Golem really shouldn't be using Special moves to begin with, so what does that leave in OU? A bunch of Ice-types (which are always going to use their STAB), Egg/Zam which notoriously have no coverage and would love to have either, and Zapdos which would murder 1000 babies to get Blizzard but only 10 to get Fire Blast. I suppose there's Slowbro, but Slowbro has a grand total of one free moveslot, and if it's sticking a status move there it's going for the reliable Thunder Wave or the incapacitating Ice Beam. Not like it needs to cover Articuno and Jynx anyway.

World's Strongest Fairy

Thing is that the one thing that could really take a shot at using Fire Blast over Blizzard - Starmie - doesn't get it. Chansey needs Ice for the Rocks because it has no STAB, Tauros is literally only using Blizzard to hit Rocks, and the same goes for Snorlax and Dragonite if they even bother with it. Rhydon/Golem really shouldn't be using Special moves to begin with, so what does that leave in OU? A bunch of Ice-types (which are always going to use their STAB), Egg/Zam which notoriously have no coverage and would love to have either, and Zapdos which would murder 1000 babies to get Blizzard but only 10 to get Fire Blast. I suppose there's Slowbro, but Slowbro has a grand total of one free moveslot, and if it's sticking a status move there it's going for the reliable Thunder Wave or the incapacitating Ice Beam. Not like it needs to cover Articuno and Jynx anyway.

Starmie does not need Blizzard to handle rock types and can hit Jynx and Eggy with Fire Blast instead of Dragonite and Eggy. So Fire Blast would not be useless on Starmie so you could use it to spread burns if you want that.

But I still doubt that anyone would play this even if Starmie had Fire Blast